Philip & the Ethiopian - Acts 8:26-40

After experiencing great success preaching the gospel in Samaria, “the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.” Doing as the angel commanded, Philip left Samaria and while traveling met “a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship.” Let’s revisit the topic of eunuchs really quick, just for an overview. I remember when I was in college, I took a class where the teacher was talking why parents would want their children to be eunuchs in past cultures. The professor basically said that having their testicles removed would mean that boys weren’t motivated by sex and the testosterone deficiency would make them less likely to steal and make them more honest.

The professor said, “who do you want protecting your wife and daughters? A regularly intact soldier or a man who can’t act on any sexual impulse? To be fair, the minimal amount of research that I’ve done says that it still is technically possible for a eunuch to have sexual urges and behaviors, but they were significantly diminished. My professor also noted that men who are not tied down to families can dedicate more time and attention to their profession, which would be a highly desirable trait in a government worker. Another factor that might come in to play here is that with most of their testosterone being taken away, eunuch might tend to be less violent, more level headed, and able to think things through. Obviously, castration was effective enough to make servants who could be trusted with highly prioritized things that it’s been employed for thousands of years.
Let’s take a look at this eunuch from Ethiopia, he was trusted by the queen to be in charge of all her treasure and instead of planning her overthrow so he could take the throne for himself, he was studying foreign religion searching for truth. And that’s how Philip found him when he saw a chariot and obeyed the prompting to “go near, and join thyself to this chariot. Running up to this chariot, I’m sure that he was quite surprised to find this man, this foreign, probably dark skinned man reading “the prophet Esaias.” Philip asks the man, “understandest thou what thou readest?” and the man answered, “How can I except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.”
To be fair, Esaias (or Isaiah as we know him, I think) is pretty difficult to understand even for those born and raised with the scriptures, and if this Ethiopian man didn’t know about Jesus or even really the concept of a Messiah, then the words of Isaiah would have been incredibly abstract. The scripture that the eunuch asked Philip about is Isaiah 52:7-8, and asks, “I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.”
Both of these men were prepared to have this conversation, the eunuch had found all that he could to learn about truth, and Philip was worthy to have the Spirit with him to teach the man about Jesus. Let’s consider how the Ethiopian man had come to learn about Isaiah in the first place. Being from Africa, there probably weren’t many Jews there, and surely there weren’t any teaching the law of Moses. In order for this guy (let’s call him Bob from now on), to get a hold of the book of Isaiah and read it with enough understanding to discern that he is speaking about a person, he would have needed access to probably restricted educational materials, which he was probably able to get because of his high status in the government. He must have studied these words and felt the truthfulness of them and yearned for more. He was probably in Jerusalem worshipping and trying to learn more information about what he had read. It makes sense that even after going to Jerusalem, he wasn’t able to understand the prophecies of the Savior in Isaiah because the teachers in Jerusalem didn’t understand them either.
Philip teaches the man about Jesus and how he had fulfilled the prophecies of Isaiah and taught with enough power and authority that this highly educated, incredibly powerful foreign man immediately desired to be baptized. Philip answered, “if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” And coming to “a certain water” both men “went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.” The IM comments, “Since Ethiopia, in present-day Africa, was not part of Judea, the conversion partially fulfilled the prophecy recorded in Acts 1:8 that the gospel would spread beyond Judea and Samaria, and it foreshadowed the dramatic missionary work about to commence among the gentiles.”
Then in an interesting turn of events, “when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the unuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea."